Visualizing Terror Incidents

Visualizing Statistical Numbness of Terror Incidents

The impact of terrorism surfaced breaking news headlines countless of times and conditioned fear to the global population. Visualizing statistical numbness of terror incidents is a microsite that highlights the countries most affected by terror incidents and their irregular prioritization within news media coverage.

Foremost, the reader is introduced to the impact of terrorism worldwide and later acquires familiarity about the countries affected in 2016. When readers are generally affected by a preconceived image of a country and their connection to the issue, they lose sight of countries whose everyday struggles are undocumented. Although readers don’t write headlines, their perceived interests shape them.

As news becomes dehumanized, we notice how new media organizations shape the language for their news headlines. As a result, the empathy gap widens, when a reader’s perceptions are a blend of reason and subjective emotions, which in turn determines the newsworthiness of news media headlines.

Topic Research

Idea Brainstorm

Data Collection

Visual Interface

Global Terrorism

The Impact of Global Terrorism

Comparing the impact of terror incidents, deaths, and injuries between countries

3

News Media Coverage of Bombing Incidents

Beirut and Paris experienced terror incidents only one day apart and the news media's coverage of both events consisted of an empathy gap.

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A Closer Look at Bombing Incidents

Showing bombing incidents over a monthly period and the countries affected

Section No. 1

Global Terrorism

The visualization introduces the reader to the probability of countries’ connection to terror incidents by ranking positions. A world map displays the countries most affected by terror incidents as opposed to the ones who possibility render little effect. The countries positioning falls in ranges between 0 and 10 and determines the ranking colour across a heat map.

Section No. 2

The Impact of Global Terrorism

In order to understand the impact of global terrorism, the reader compares the effect of terror incidents between countries. The selected countries display each country’s total number of terror incidents and a total number of witnesses affected. The reader then obtains empathy and develops a connection to a country’s regular occurrence of terror incidents.

Section No. 3

News Media Coverage of Terror Incidents

The third section refers to the example of Paris vs. Beirut terror incidents that happened only a day apart. Most of the news articles mentioned reasons and doubts as to why Paris got more news coverage than Beirut. Those reasons revolved around a reader’s familiarity with a country and how they’re perceived interests shape their connection to the issue.

Section No. 4

A Closer Look at Bombing Incidents

Finally, a graph shows the most countries affected by bombing incidents over a monthly period in 2016. The visualization shows the reader how certain countries are regularly targeted as opposed to the ones that are not. The reader learns to develop an interest in terror attacks that occur further from them and empathy towards countries to which they have not yet visited.